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New York 2140, Worthwhile Reading

Kim Stanley Robinson strikes again with this 2017 sci-fi look at New York 2140,
after the climate disasters (50 foot sea level rise and massive hurricanes) strike.
That’s to be expected from Time magazine’s 2008 “Hero of the Environment”.
What’s perhaps new from him is the clear explanation of banking and finance,
and how they corrupt the market and politics to the detriment of the world’s
people. That much alone made it a worthwhile read for me. Add likable
characters, plenty of technological imagining, and the downfall of corporate
banks (finally nationalized to tremendous economic benefit!) and it gave me hope
for my great-grandchildren, in addition to a fine read..
One of many insightful passages is this:
“The bailout of the 2008 crash…was calculated by historians at somewhere
between 5 and 15 trillion dollars. One careful guess said it was 7.7 trillion dollars,
another 13 trillion; both added that this was more than the cost (adjusted for
inflation) of the Louisiana Purchase, the New Deal, the Marshall Plan, the Korean
War, the Vietnam War, the 1980s savings and loan bailout, the Iraq wars, and
the entire NASA space program, combined. Conclusion: wars and land and
social programs must not be very expensive. And compared to rescuing finance
from itself, they’re not.”